'Logan' Almost Included a Much Darker Opening Sequence

While Logan was, in general, an extremely dark and violent film (although a very good one), the story had to be toned down during the screenwriting process for being even more dark and violent. Because according to Logan director James Mangold, the film was initially going to open with "The Westchester Incident."

if you've seen the movie, you might remember a massacre in Westchester being alluded to, but never directly addressed - Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), his mind weakening from old age, had his first psychic breakdown and killed all the X-Men in his school. Despite its subtlety, it was a defining moment for the bleak, mutant-less world the story takes place in, and was the entire reason for why Logan kept Charles trapped in a makeshift prison cell, dosed up on his anti-psychic drugs.

Speaking to IGN, Mangold talked about how the sequence was supposed to be filmed, but was ultimately cut for setting a wrong tone for the movie:

"I literally had written an opening which started with that sequence. And so it was quite literal, who was dead. But the reason we didn't do it wasn't to spare other films, it was that it redefined the movie. It made the movie about the X-Men, instead of being about Logan and Charles. And irrevocably, when you read the script opening that way, it became about this other tragedy, as opposed to that tragedy being something hovering like a shadow in the background for these characters."

It's a departure from the Old Man Logan comics the story is loosely based on, where the death of the X-Men was shown in full detail, although Wolverine himself was the killer then (he was tricked by Mysterio, a colorful Spider-Man villain who was thankfully absent in this film).

But Mangold's reasoning for cutting it is sound, and the tragic event would lost some dramatic power if it went from "haunting memory" to "onscreen gore fest." It wasn't the only scene involving the larger X-Men universe to get cut, as scenes involving Jean Grey and Sabretooth were also removed.

And that's not the only interesting thing Mangold has revealed recently. To transition into something much less depressing, there's also an odd explanation for one of Charles' strange monologues about Taco Bell, which he gave while his brain was rattled from the drugs Logan was giving him. Speaking to Huffington Post, Mangold explained that it's a result of a deal with Taco Bell that never came to be (it was never meant to be product placement):

"The funny story of why that dialogue's in there is, I was actually offered a Taco Bell commercial while we were in prep... And while I was writing the scene, I was looking for Charles to say things - random things - that indicate that he'd been watching TV too much, and I literally had this Taco Bell commercial script on my desk for the new quesalupa from Taco Bell, and in my desperation to get pages done, I just took it and plugged it right in."

Logan is now out on Blu-ray, which comes with a black-and-white version of the film called Logan Noir.